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It doesn’t seem that long ago (it was though), that I was not really concentrating during my History GCSE classes because I had one thing on my mind, Snake. You know what I mean, that simple yet really addictive game on the old Nokia mobile phones. When I got the chance to review Hard Lines I jumped at it.

Hard Lines is a very simple game. You play as a line called Lionel, and your task is to travel along paths to collect Glowy Things for points, whilst trying not to crash into walls or another line trail. However, as you would expect, if another line crashes into your trail you will kill them. There are various ways to control Lionel; the simplest way is to swipe in the direction you want him to move.

Spilt Milk Studios have made up some brilliant variations of an already brilliant game including Survival, Time Attack, Dead Line, Gauntlet and Piñata as well as an original snake mode. In survival mode you just keep collecting Glowy Things for as long as you can while avoiding other lines in order to achieve the highest score possible. The different modes definitely keep the game interesting and gives you a different challenge each time.

Hard Lines stand out feature is the presentation. Inspiration has clearly been taken from great games such as Pacman and Geometry Wars, with its vibrant neon colours but all the lines also have great character, as you play you’ll notice the lines spouting random quotes whilst they’re moving around the screen. It’s rare to see such personality in this kind of title, and it’s wonderful.

The most successful iPhone games keep you interested with their simple gameplay, choices of modes and well thought out presentation, Hard lines emphatically ticks all of those boxes and also adds some great humour into the mix. I’ve been playing the game for a week now and I can’t help but to pop back on it quickly to see if I can beat my best scores. Hard Lines is a truly addictive and fun titles that successfully avoids trading on Snake nostalgia.

If you fancy playing something a little bit different then this is the perfect opportunity as it’s only 59p for a short time and I’m sure you won’t regret it.

MLG Rating: 9/10Platform: iOS Release Date: 9/06/11

Disclosure: Midlife Gamer were provided a digital copy of Hard Lines for review purposes by the promoter. The title was reviewed over the course of one week on an iPhone 3GS. For more information on what our scores mean, plus details of our reviews policy, click here.

This entry was posted
on Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 12:00 and is filed under Reviews.
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